The Usurper's Crown (9 page)

But while the fire blazed and filled him with pain, to his eye it appeared to have lost the power to consume. His skin, although it was surrounded by flame, remained untouched. So too did the paper on the coals. Only the ink began to smoke. It bubbled as if boiling in a pot. Kacha’s fingers stirred the flame. The ink sizzled and the smoke took on a bitter smell. At last, all the ink turned to black steam and drifted away.

Kacha’s hand twitched the parchment out of the flames. The pain ceased at once and the chill air was like a blessing against his skin. Relief buckled Kacha’s knees and he dropped to the floor. Tears of remembered pain and present relief mixed with the sweat running down his face.

Kacha impatiently dashed the tears away with his left hand. His right hand smoothed the paper out against the floor. He peered at it closely and his right eye saw a series of faint, gray tracings, pale words that seemed to have been written with nothing but smoke.

I do not like that Medeoan has left your side now
, read the words.
Keep close watch on her. It may be she has realized she can no longer play at being free from her birth. Concentrate your efforts on the Lord Sorcerer and the Mistress of the House. If we may secure those two, nothing may be done or said within the palace walls without our knowing of it
.

Soon it will be time to move to the Summer Palace. Before then, you must find your way down into the Isavaltan treasury. There you will be able to find the means to secure your wife should she begin to pull away from your side. Send word to me as soon as you gain access, and I will guide you further
.

Kacha nodded in thoughtful silence at what he read. As usual, his father’s sorcerer,
Agnidh
Yamuna, spoke with keen understanding. Kacha allowed himself a moment to pity Medeoan. His child bride would lose her empire without ever having truly gained it. It would be sad to watch her when she realized what happened.

Her death, when it came, would surely be a relief to her.

Chapter Three

“I’m taking the soup down to Mrs. Whitkoff,” called Ingrid to her mother, bundling up the two crockery jars in the burlap satchel. “Is there anything we need from the store?”

Mama remained bent over the washtub and shook her head. For a change, Ingrid was glad of her mother’s indifference. Since Mama stopped watching her, her task had become much easier, although her life had become that much lonelier.

For two weeks, Grace had languished in her bed. Ingrid had spooned broth, milk, and beer down her, and she swallowed, but it brought her no strength. At least she had stopped her nocturnal roaming. Avan’s advice had done that much already.

Everett had made good his promise the day after Ingrid had seen the ghost. He’d come to the kitchen door at dusk and stood there with his worn, blue cap in his hands. “He said,” Everett did not bother to use Avan’s name, “that you should tie a piece of iron around her neck, and put another under her bed. This will keep her in the house. He has begun work on a stronger cure.”

Iron. Of course. When Ingrid was small, when Mama still felt inclined to tell fairy stories, she had said that cold iron was proof against magic. Hadn’t Avan said as much last night? “Thank you, Everett.”

She expected him to bow his head bashfully then, as was his usual habit. Instead, he fixed her with a look of unusual determination. “Ingrid, what is happening?”

Ingrid took a deep breath. He had earned the truth, but this time it was she who could not look directly at him. She watched her fingers pick at the edge of the kitchen table. “Grace is haunted. Avan has knowledge of these things. We hope to lay the ghost, and free her.”

“You believe this?” Incredulity filled Everett’s voice. She could find no fault with that.

Ingrid nodded. “I saw it.”

Silence stretched out long and tight between them until Ingrid saw Everett’s shadow move across the table. She looked up. He had taken two steps inside the door, coming in just far enough to touch the tabletop, as if by touching the same surface she did he would be able to create some vibration of communion between them. “Is … is there any way I can help?” He did not doubt her. He would not. Everett dealt honestly and expected honesty in return.

For the thousandth time Ingrid wondered why she looked at Everett without love. He would marry her in an instant. Papa and Mama would raise no objection. He would build a new house for her and they would live in it together. He would never raise his voice to her. He would never think of raising his hand to her or their children. It would be so easy. All she had to do was say yes to him.

Perhaps, after all, that was the reason. It would be too easy a release. She would never know if she went with Everett out of love, or out of a final need to escape her parents’ house. Without that certainty, she would have to live with the fear of her heart’s life washing out of her, as it had washed out of her mother. “I will let you know, I promise.”

Her words caused a gentle grin to form on Everett’s face. “I’ll hold you to that, Ingrid.” He started to turn away.

“Everett …” Ingrid raised her hand as if to snatch at him.

“Yes?” He looked back over his shoulder, his eyebrows arched.

“I can’t … I don’t …” Ingrid’s voice shook, and her hand fell to her side.

But Everett spared her the necessity of finishing her sentence. “I know.” He shrugged easily. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it does
, she wanted to say.
You should love someone who is able to love you in return. You should be happy
. That, however, was not something Everett would want to hear, and she would not disgrace this moment he had given her by saying it. Instead, she said the only words left to her. “You are a good man, Everett Lederle.”

He smiled. “I am at that. I’ll look in on you later, Ingrid.”

“Thank you, Everett.”

He waved his cap as a farewell before setting it back on his head.

So she had done what Avan said. She fetched a broken and rusted hinge from the shed and tied one half around Grace’s neck on a piece of twine, and slid the other under her side of the bed. That night Grace had struggled, and she had cried out, but she had not risen.

“I hear him, Ingrid,” she whispered.

“I know.” Ingrid had tried to smooth out Grace’s brow. “But not for much longer.”

The Whitkoffs lived on the edge of Eastbay nearest the cove that gave the settlement its name. Mrs. Whitkoff was down with the croup, leaving her eldest daughter Lucia to manage on her own. Mrs. Gustavson was coming in to help, though, and so far the Loftfields’ gifts of bread and broth were not being turned away, although no one seemed to have time to stand and chat anymore. Perhaps no one wanted to take the chance that Grace’s madness was contagious, or perhaps it was just Papa and Leo’s scowling at every man on the island was finally beginning to wear on their neighbors’ patience.

Lucia Whitkoff, who had dark circles under her bright blue eyes, met Ingrid at the door with a broom in one hand and her infant brother balanced on her hip. Ingrid left one of the two jars on the kitchen table, and hurried away before Lucia had time to get really uncomfortable. She had no time to linger anyway. She had her own errand to complete, and she could not take long, or Mama would want to know where she’d been, and Ingrid was fast running out of lies.

The sun sparkled on the bay, turning the water silver and blue. Despite the warmth of the summer sun, Ingrid wrapped her shawl around her head, so that from the boats out on the lake, she’d be an anonymous woman with an anonymous bundle tucked under her arm. If Papa saw, if Leo saw … it didn’t bear thinking about. But now was the time she had to come, because now was the time when the fishers’ shacks were deserted, and there was no one to see her scurrying between them. No one but Avan.

We must bring the ghost’s bones up from the lake. I am making a net for the purpose
.

He’d delivered that message by Everett. Ingrid kept it tucked under her pillow as if it were a love letter. It was written on a scrap of brown paper with grease pencil in a bold, flowing hand, like none she had ever seen.

At the dark of the moon, we will go fishing. Come find me when you can
.

But as she approached his rickety shack this morning, she did not see a plume of smoke rising from the tin chimney. Worry struck her. She rounded the hut to the door, and knocked for form’s sake.

“Avan?” she whispered, when there was no answer, pushing the door open.

Avan slumped in the hut’s one chair, the great net he had been weaving spread out across his legs like a quilt. Ingrid gasped, almost losing her grip on the jar of soup she carried. Avan’s hand twitched, scrabbling at a single knot, and even in the hut’s gloom, she could see the blood staining his skin.

Quickly, Ingrid set the crock down by the door and ran forward. She pulled the net out from under Avan’s hands, letting it fall in a heap onto the ground. As soon as the strings slipped from his fingers, his hands stilled and fell limp at his sides. The weight of them threatened to drag him out of the chair, but Ingrid caught him under the armpits.

“Come, you must help me,” she grunted as she heaved him to his feet.

Avan didn’t even groan, but he must have had a little strength in his legs, because he staggered beside Ingrid as she hefted him over to the rickety wooden cot that was his bed and dropped him onto it. She snatched the frying pan off the stove and ran out to the lake, scooping up some water to set on the stove. Upon opening the stove’s door, she found three coals still glowing amid the ashes and was able to coax them to life with some of the tinder from the woodbox.

Avan groaned. Ingrid strode to the bedside, taking off her apron. She saw no cleaner cloth. His skin was fever hot against hers as she wiped away the blood from his tattered finger ends.

“What in God’s name happened to you?” she murmured. He’d said the task would be hard. He’d stopped going out on the boats to save his strength, he’d said. She’d become used to seeing Avan growing more pale, but this, this was gruesome.

Steam began to rise from the water on the stove. She washed his hands again in the hot water, cleaning away the scabs so they could bleed freely for a while. She propped them up on her apron. She’d have to find something to use as bandaging. She surveyed the hut and saw rope, and sacking, and two chests, one bound in rope, the other bound in iron.

“Forgive the intrusion, if you will.” Ingrid opened the rope-bound chest and found a spare shirt and trousers, some linens and socks and four huge, worn, but serviceable handkerchiefs.

“Thank goodness. I’ve enough explaining to do. I come home without my apron or with my petticoats torn, I’d never be let out of the house again.”

She pulled the chair up beside the cot and wrapped one handkerchief over his fingers, making a crude mitten. As she did, she saw again how graceful his hands were, and she could not help but notice that his calluses were fresh, as on the hands of a boy who had just started out regularly in the boats, not like the ancient knobs that coated her father and brothers’ hands. He had scars too, three long, white slashes on his palm, and a whole series of old nicks on his wrists.

What are you?
she wondered, winding the second kerchief around the first and tying it tight to make a secure, if improvised, dressing.
What are you doing here at all?

She picked up his left hand and felt the tips of her ears heating up. His hand was heavy and warm against hers, and from her secret self came the sudden wish to press the back of it against her cheek, to feel how that smooth skin would feel touching her face, how it would be to press her lips against it.

By the time she tied the second dressing off, she knew she was blushing furiously. She pressed her palms against her cheeks, willing herself to calm.

Then she saw Avan’s eyes open and watching her, and all the blood in her heart rushed burning to her face.

“Keep still, sir,” she said, rising swiftly to her feet and turning away. “You need a cool cloth for that head …”

“No,” he croaked. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be back in a heartbeat.” She moved away, but she hesitated.

“No,” he said again. “Please. Stay here.”

Ingrid’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. “All right.” She pulled the chair back so she sat by his head. “But you shouldn’t talk …”

“Yes,” he said. “I must. I must … come back. Too far gone.” He had to drag in several long breaths. “Too long away. I must touch earth again.”

Ingrid frowned in incomprehension. “What can I do?”

He rolled his eyes toward her and said quite seriously, “Sing for me.”

Ingrid wanted to protest, but only for a moment. The time for questions would come later. She must have Avan strong and well to save Grace. So she licked her lips, and began.

“Oh yes, my lads, we’ll roll a-lee
,

Come down, you blood red roses, come down
.

We’ll soon be far away from sea
.

Oh, you pinks and posies
.

Come down, you blood red roses, come down.”

She did not look at him as the verses wound along, the slow, old song of a man coming home from sea, sung to keep time while hauling on the ropes. She wanted to keep her mind on Grace’s need, on how she might explain her lengthy absence to Mama, and how she would get out of the house tonight, but her hands still tingled from touching Avan’s hand, and she could not pull herself away from the sensation.

“Come down, you blood red roses, come down …”

“Thank you,” he said when her song was finished, and his voice sounded stronger. “That cool cloth would be welcome now.”

Ingrid all but ran from the hut to fetch a fresh pan full of water.

Avan lay silent and patient as Ingrid sponged his face down with a rag she found by the stove. He had no cup, so she held the hut’s one tin bowl to his lips so that he could swallow some of the water.

“Thank you,” he said again. “Now, Ingrid, I must ask you to listen closely to me.”